Monday, August 12, 2013

try to catch a library in your hands

In the early hours of August 25, 1992, Serbian nationalist soldiers nested in the craggy hills surrounding the besieged city of Sarajevo trained their artillery pieces on a graceful building that for four decades had functioned admirably as home to the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Shortly after 10 p.m., the gunmen opened fire with a barrage of incendiary shells from four elevated positions … [W]ithin minutes the architectural landmark … was spewing flames … Hampered by low pressure in the water mains, firefighters watched helplessly … Fueled by fifteen thousand meters of wooden shelving and a collection of books estimated to have numbered 1.5 million volumes, the fire smoldered for three days …

That's just one of the many acts of violence visited on books and libraries in the 20th century. In language poetic and tragic Kemal Bakarsic, a librarian of the nearby National Museum, remembers the scene:

[B]ecause there was no wind, the leaves of the books were floating very slowly. And really, you can capture a leaf in your hand, and you can read it before it disintegrates. The text is black, the background is gray, you can feel the heat, and the instant the heat goes into your palm, it all melts. But there is a moment where you have a final chance to make out a line or two, a word or two …

I tried to catch as many pages as I could …

source: A Splendor of Letters: the permanence of books in an impermanent world by Nicholas A. Basbanes